CISPA Passes US House, Despite Privacy Shortcomings and Promised Veto 231
An anonymous reader writes with a story at the Daily Dot: "Despite the protests of Internet privacy advocates, the controversial Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) passed the House of Representatives Thursday. The vote was 288-127. ... CISPA saw a handful of minor amendments soon before passage. A representative for the EFF told the Daily Dot that while they were still analyzing the specifics, none of the actual changes to the bill addressed their core criticisms. ... But also as was the case the year before, on Tuesday the Obama administration issued a promise to veto the bill if it reaches the president’s desk without significant changes."
Techdirt has a short report on the vote, too — and probably more cutting commentary soon to follow.
Re:90% (Score:5, Informative)
The problem of ruling by the majority is that minority interests get overlooked (see gay marriage).
The system we have in place currently is *SUPPOSED* to balance the will of the people (via election) and the morality of the elected (via legislature).
But you are still right that we have moved passed this. The sad thing is we deserve the government we vote for. Congress has a 95% re-election rate while having a 10% approval rating. Everyone hates what Congress has become, but everyone also things it's not their reps fault.
The only way to fix this is if EVERYONE votes out their representative, regardless of their party affiliation. We need fresh blood in there. Some of those reps won't leave until they either resign or die in office.
Re:90% (Score:2, Informative)
Umm, no.
90%+ was the percentage of people polled in Pennsylvania that agreed that "requiring background checks for all gun buyers" was a good idea.
It was also the percentage of people polled in New Jersey and Virginia that agreed that "requiring background checks on people buying guns at gun shows".
Neither of which the bill in question did. It insisted on doing bunches of other things.
Note also that the people of New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Virginia are NOT a representative sample of the entire USA on something like gun control....
Re:Veto ??? (Score:3, Informative)
It also got more than a 2/3 majority [house.gov], so it's not clear a veto would even matter. Though it's possible that some of the "yes" Dem votes here would change to "no" if Obama vetoed it, to avoid overriding a president from their party.
Pro-CISPA out-lobbied antis by 140:1 (Score:5, Informative)
http://reporting.sunlightfoundation.com/2013/pro-cispa-backers-spend-over-100-times-more-lobbying-opponents/ [sunlightfoundation.com]
Interests supporting a controversial bill aimed at improving cyber security, set for a House vote Thursday, spent 140 times as much lobbying Congress as those on the other side of the debate and have dozens of former Capitol Hill insiders working on their behalf, an analysis by the Sunlight Foundation's Reporting Group shows.
Sunlight's review of lobbying disclosures from the last session of Congress in Influence Explorer shows that backers of the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act had $605 million in lobbying expenditures from 2011 through the third quarter of last year compared to $4.3 million spent by opponents of the bill. While it's impossible to say how many of those dollars were devoted to trying to influence votes on the CISPA bill (many of those entities have multiple interests before Congress), it provides some measure of the lopsidedness of the resources available to each side.
Here are the lobbying totals for supporters: https://data.sunlightlabs.com/dataset/Lobbying-totals-by-CISPA-proponents/5brg-ruk9 [sunlightlabs.com]
and opponents: https://data.sunlightlabs.com/dataset/Lobbying-totals-by-CISPA-opponents/jhe8-cki6 [sunlightlabs.com]
Re:Laws for the internet, no law for guns (Score:4, Informative)
Not quite correct.
When you go to a gunshow to buy a gun, the seller (if he's a dealer) has to do the same background check he'd do in his regular shop.
The so-called "gunshow loophole" is that you can buy a gun from a private citizen at a gunshow without a background check. Which you can do without going to a gunshow too - yes, it's legal for me to sell one of my guns to someone without running a background check.